Matthias Ogden

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Matthias Ogden (born October 22, 1754 in Elizabeth , Province of New Jersey ; died March 31, 1791 ibid) was a member of the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War .

Life

The Death of General Montgomery in the Attack on Quebec , painting by John Trumbull , 1786.
Ogden is holding the dying General Montgomery in his arms.

He was the son of Robert Ogden, a member of the House of Commons of New Jersey and a delegate of that state to the Stamp Act Congress 1765. His younger brother Aaron Ogden also emerged as a " patriot " during the Revolution .

Shortly after the outbreak of the War of Independence, Matthias Ogden and his childhood friend Aaron Burr volunteered for the revolutionary Continental Army and took part in the invasion of Canada : In September, as a member of Benedict Arnold's 1,100-strong expeditionary corps , he set out on a march through Maine to the British fortress Quebec on. He was wounded in the Battle of Quebec on the last day of the year. He can be seen in one of the iconic images of the American Revolution , John Trumbull's The Death of General Montgomery in the Attack on Quebec , but at the time of the depicted event - the death of Richard Montgomery - he was already in the hospital; Burr, who was actually present, is missing in the representation.

After returning from Canada he was first appointed Lieutenant Colonel (Lieutenant Colonel) of the 1st Battalion of the State of New Jersey in March 1776 , then raised to Colonel (Colonel) in January 1777 and his association was promoted to a regiment. Until the end of the war, Ogden remained in command of this unit. In November 1780 he was captured by the British in Elizabethtown, but in April 1781 he was released again in a prisoner exchange. In March 1782 he planned the ultimately failed capture of the British Prince William Henry (later King William IV. ). In 1783 he was released from service by the Congress to undertake a trip to Europe; in Paris, King Louis XVI. the prestigious droit du tabouret. After his return to America and the end of the war, he was raised by Congress retroactively to September 30, 1783 by brevet to Brigadier General (Brigadier General).

In 1789, the Governor and Council of New Jersey named Ogden one of the state's six electoral officers in the presidential election .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The Death of General Montgomery in Attack on Quebec, December 31, 1775 - Smithsonian American Art Museum inventory entry
  2. ^ Nancy Isenberg : Fallen Founder. The Life of Aaron Burr. Viking, New York 2007. pp. 27-28.
  3. ↑ Information on military career from: Appleton's Cyclopædia of American Biography , 1888.
  4. ↑ Gordon DenBoer: The Documentary History of the First Federal Elections 1788-1790. U of Wisconsin Press, Madison 1987. p. 31.
personal data
SURNAME Ogden, Matthias
BRIEF DESCRIPTION General of the Continental Army in the American Revolutionary War
DATE OF BIRTH October 22, 1754
PLACE OF BIRTH Elizabeth , New Jersey
DATE OF DEATH March 31, 1791
Place of death Elizabeth , New Jersey